"Well, start now, dear man of Lammis. What is it you have to do before twelve o'clock to-night?" "What is it? Why, I have to pay over two thousand of this,"—he flourished the banknotes—"and even then I'll still have two thousand left. But wait—wait. There was the original fifty pounds. Where is that fifty pounds, little girl alive? Out with it. This is the profit. Where is the fifty you staked?" His voice was gay with raillery.
She could look him in the face now and prevaricate without any shame or compunction at all. "That fifty pounds—that! Why, I used it to buy my ticket for Canada. My husband ought to pay my expenses out to him."
He laughed greatly. All Ireland was rioting in his veins now. He had no logic or reasoning left. "Well, that's the way to get into your old man's heart, Mona. To think of that! I call it tact divine. Everything has spun my way at last. I was right about that Derby, after all. It was in my bones that I'd make a pot out of it, but I thought I had lost it all when Flamingo went down."
"You never know your luck—you used to say that, Shiel."
"I say it again. Come, we must tell our friends—Kitty, her mother, and the Young Doctor. You don't know what good friends they have been to me, mavourneen."
"Yes, I think I do," said Mona, opening the door to the outer room.
Then Crozier called with a great, cheery voice—what Mona used to call his tally-ho voice. Mrs. Tynan appeared, smiling. She knew at a glance what had happened. It was so interesting that she could even forgive Mona.
"Where's Kitty?" asked Crozier, almost boisterously.
"She has gone for a ride with John Sibley," answered Mrs. Tynan.
"Look, there she is!" said Mona, laying a hand on Crozier's arm, and pointing with the other out over the prairie.